Mutual fund security code

[Derek Atkins]

While this sounds like an interesting idea, it would add yet another
dependency on Gnucash:  PERL and Finance::Quote.  I'm not sure that
we want Gnucash to depend on those packages.

-derek

Glen Ditchfield <gjditchfield@acm.org> writes:

> For extra points, make the extension download the Finance::Quote module for 
> the price source.
> 
> But are there any legal issues?  If I store this information on my computer, 
> no one gives a hoot in practice.  If you store it publically on 
> www.gnucash.org, you become a target for legal attack.  There have been 
> lawsuits over things like catalog numbers in stamp catalogs.  A financial web 
> site might consider their internal codes to be proprietary, and extracting 
> price information might violate terms of use.
> 
> I also dislike the idea of putting arbitrary strings in the user interface.  
> Can we hide security codes, and make them a private matter between GnuCash 
> and Finance::Quote?  Each Finance::Quote module already "knows" a bit about 
> security codes for its quote source.  We would have to extend the modules so 
> that they know how to find the security code for a security or mutual fund.  
> The program flow would be something like
> - the user selects quote source 'Wahoo' for the security named 'AGF Canadian 
> Aggressive'.
> - GnuCash asks Finance::Quote::Wahoo for a list of securities and security 
> codes, passing 'AGF Canadian Aggressive' as a hint.
> - Finance::Quote::Wahoo does its site-specific thing to build the list.  
> (Finance::Quote::Tdwaterhouse would download the comma-separate-values file 
> of all funds that it already uses.  Finance::Quote::Yahoo would feed a search 
> term to http://finance.yahoo.com/l.)
> - GnuCash would show the user the list.  The user would pick one.
> - GnuCash would squirrel the security code away.
> 
> Finance::Quote modules should also have some way to pass a 'help' message 
> back to the user, to give hints about constructing security names.  ("Go to 
> http://finance.yahoo.com/l, and try different search terms.")
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-- 
       Derek Atkins, SB '93 MIT EE, SM '95 MIT Media Laboratory
       Member, MIT Student Information Processing Board  (SIPB)
       URL: http://web.mit.edu/warlord/    PP-ASEL-IA     N1NWH
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